Rough Drafts
by starbelow
Summary: ONESHOT: Jayne tries to vent his feeling through a letter...or several of them. Pairing: Rayne.


**_A/N: Joss is Boss. I do NOT own any of these characters, even though I wish I did. But I like playing with them!!_**

Jayne paced restlessly. His feet repeatedly walked the familiar route of back and forth in the mess hall. His eyes shifted from the warm colored walls to the floor. To the carefully painted designs framing the entryways to the floor. To Inara's warm, welcoming, smile to the floor.

A million thoughts flitted through his head, he was unable to settle on one.

"Is everything well?" Inara asked, her voice was smooth and soft, like velvet. The companion was sitting at the table with a hot cup of tea. "Is there something you want to...perhaps, talk about?"

Laughter that illuminates a room like sunlight.

Large round eyes, a gleaming brown stare that peers deep into his soul.

"Nah, it ain't nothin' much." Jayne grumbled with annoyance.

"Come here and sit down. Let's talk." She patted the seat next to her. "I won't charge you." Inara offered a cheeky smile.

With his thoughts so scattered, like the stars in the sky, Jayne never realized that his feet had stopped pacing and led him to the empty chair.

"What's on your mind?" Inara's long graceful fingers tapped the chipped cup in her hands.

"Uh, say there a fella that makes ya start to go all kinds'a funny, but ya know ya can't ever have'em - "

"Excuse me?" Inara choked on her tea as she chuckled. She cleared her throat and her lips pulled into a amused smile. "I always get the man I want, if I do my profession correctly."

"But, what 'bout Mal - "

"I said the man that I want" Her smile faded. Inara stared into the murky darkness of her tea. She pulled her shawl, maroon and fringed with small golden tassels, tighter around her shoulders as if she had caught a chill. "Continue."

"Ya know ya can't ever have'em, but ya just can't get'em outta yer mind. They'er just stuck up there in yer head'n ya can't get rid of'em, what do ya do?"

The companion fingered the small tassels as she contemplated a answer for the distressed merc. Her dark brown eyes looked at the hard features of his face. His heavy brow was marked with deep worry lines, his eyes shifted from side to side, restlessly looking for a solution to his problem on the table surface or on his large dirty hands.

She had never seen him in such a state, he was clearly in pain. He was yearning for some thing he could never have. It wasn't like she was unable to relate to that, things with Mal hadn't gone all that well, as she had wanted it to. But they were friends, at least, and that was all she could hope for. Mal belonged to Kaylee, or rather Kaylee belonged to Mal. When she discovered their relationship, Inara acted with composure and dignity, like any other companion would. She didn't keep her emotions bottled up forever, she did have her own way of venting...

"Still speaking hypothetically, if I ever had such strong feelings for someone I couldn't have, I would release everything I'm feeling through a letter. Write this person a letter, but do not give it or send it to them."

"Ain't that kinda pointless?" Jayne tilted his head to the side and peered at the companion with confusion written across his face.

Inara raised her cup to her mouth, the steam tickled her small nose and evaporated in the air. She watched the wheels as they turned achingly slow in the merc's dull mind.

"It's a psychological method, people use it as a means to vent their emotions instead of holding them all in."

"Ya sure 'bout this?" Jayne sat back in his chair. "Ya ain't tryin' to make a fool outta me?"

"No, Jayne, I'm not trying to make a fool out of you.

"Really?"

"Really." Inara sighed quietly. "Just try it and see how it goes. If it doesn't work out then you can stop and try to find another solution."

"Fine, I'll try it. But I don't think it'll work."

* * *

River opened the entry to the merc's room and slowly climbed down the ladder.

His lair. She had slipped into his inner sanctum, and it wasn't the first time. She came here often, when she knew he was occupied elsewhere. The girl liked to take all of his guns apart, take out the magazines, piece them back together, put them on the wall and hide the magazines somewhere in the room. She usually returned days later and put the magazines back in the guns. River did this every time. She wanted to see if he would notice, to see if she would get caught. She wanted to get caught. But Jayne never noticed. Lately his mind has been full of jumbled thoughts and anger. White hot anger whenever he's near her, she doesn't even bother reading his mind anymore. The fury is too hot.

It had been a whole week since River last entered Jayne's lair. He had been locking himself away in his bunk for a handful of days. No one knew why, not that the others noticed his absence as much as River did, or even inquired about it.

_'No matter. He has resigned from his quarters at last.'_

The room smelled the same as before, a slight scent of musk mixed with metal. The room looked the exact same as it did before, when she was standing in the same spot over a week ago, but something was different.

River felt something light touching her bare feet. She looked down to see a ocean of crumpled papers so thick that she couldn't see the ground. Her feet dragged through the deep pile of discarded pages to get to the bed. She folded her legs underneath her body as she sat on the untidy bed. The guns were the last thing on her mind. Her eyes, large and brown, swept across the floor and glanced at every crumpled page covering it.

_'His words are written across these pages, how would it feel to hold one? To unravel one and read the letters scrawled across the lines?'_

"Guns...guns...take apart the guns." She told herself.

River turned her back on the sea of papers, she resisted the urge to pick up a paper and read it. Instead she turned to the rack of guns behind a cloth hanging on the wall next to Jayne's bed. Her long thin fingers brushed the rough cloth hiding the guns.

"The pages are not for you." She muttered.

River pulled the cloth aside. The black gleaming guns, nestled in their homes, stared at her innocently.

"Forget about the papers."

She wouldn't find any amusement in hiding the clips today. If she rearranged the guns, instead, he would be sure to notice and she would definately be caught. That is all she ever wanted, to be caught, to be noticed and to take a quick peek at the discarded papers.

"No, no, no." River shook her head. "No papers."

She took all of the guns down from the wall and placed them back up in reverse order. It all happened so quickly. It wasn't enough, there was still something she was itching to do. She sat on the bed with her back determinately to the floor of white.

_'No, I shouldn't'_

"Who am I kidding?" She turned with immense quickness and snatched a ball of paper from the multitude. River unraveled the ball and stretched it out on the bed. She smoothed away the wrinkles frantically with her anxious hands. Jayne's messy handwriting, thick and barely legible, was scrawled on the sheet in a few measly lines.

"River, I like you a lot but I know we can never be together. Your brother would kill me if he ever found out how much I like you. I wish I could just tas-"

She stared at the words addressed personally to her.

"It...it cannot be." She grabbed another ball of paper and smoothed it out.

"River, I don't know if you put some kind of spell on me or what, but you've got me feeling all kinds of strange. You must have put your voodoo magic on me - "

She picked up another. Each word made her heart flutter with excitement.

"I bet you didn't know that I count how many times in a day I see your face, how many times I pass you by. But no matter how many times I see you, at the end of the day it's never enough. I want to see you always, I want to - "

The corner of her lips pulled into a slow smile and laughter spilled out of her. River grabbed another and another and another until she read all the unfinished letters. She had smoothed them all out and stacked them in neat piles next to the bed. She looked at the tall white stacks in disbelief.

"All this time and I didn't even notice...how ironic." She laughed.

* * *

"I told'er it wouldn't work." Jayne grumbled as he climbed down the ladder to his room.

He had just finished telling Inara how horribly wrong her plan had gone. Instead of venting his feeling through the letters and getting rid of his emotions, the feelings just grew and grew. Every time he put pen to paper to write out whatever was in his head, he would find yet another reason as to why River was special, beautiful, funny, and smart. He would find something else about her that attracted him to her even more. The feelings only intensified.

"It can't get any worse, I suppose."

He stepped off the last bar of his ladder to see River laying on his bed with a sheet of wrinkled paper in her tiny hands. His heart beat quickened and his hands became clammy.

_'Hwoon dahn. Please tell me she didn't read'em.'_

The floor was clean, not a ball of paper in sight, only neat stacks of sheets along the side of his bed.

"What'cha think ya doin'?" He demanded. He fixed his face to intimidating and hoped that it would work on her.

"Reading my letters." She simply replied. The girl didn't even bother to look up from the page in her hands. "This is my favorite one." She held it up to show him.

_'Tzao gao.'_

"What the hell are ya doin' in my room?"

"What does it look like? Come over here, sit next to me." River sat up and patted the space next to her.

'It can't get any worse, I suppose.' He thought for the second time as he sat at her side.

"What do ya want?"

"You..." River rested her head on his broad shoulder and linked her arm with his. "and, obviously, you want me too." She smiled.

"I..I don't know 'bout that." The strong sent of vanilla from her hair filled his nose, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of her body against his. Jayne's mind faltered and he almost forgot what they were discussing.

"Then what's all of this?" She motioned to the stacks of paper.

"The truth. We can't be together, even if ya wanted me too."

"Which I do. Who said we couldn't be together?" River looked up into his face. Her large brown eyes searched features for the answer. "And don't say Simon, I can take care of him."

"I...I don't know."

"There, so it is settled. We are together. I believe Kaylee would say "an item"." The girl gave him a kiss on the hand.

"It's that easy?" Jayne asked.

River kissed him on the cheek. "That easy."

The merc grinned.

_'I finally got what I want, who am I to complain?'_

"Okay."

"Okay." She mimicked. "Now read this one to me, it's my favorite one." River handed Jayne the paper she had saved from the stacks.

"Dear River," He began. "I love you."

"Short and simple. No need to complicate things." She commented.

**Translations:**

Hwoon dahn: Son of a bitch

Tzao gao: Oh shit


End file.
